With “Mad Men” poised to embark on its seventh and final season, new images from the show capture Don Draper and company in jet-age splendor, seemingly unfazed by the nasty turbulence in the show itself.

Considering Don’s torn-down state at the end of last season—wretchedly sober, estranged from his wife, all but fired by the ad agency he built, opening up about his horrifying childhood—it’s tempting to divine some turnarounds in these sleek, sun-dappled images. After the musical chairs at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, is the whole agency decamping to California? Is that flight attendant serving water or something stronger?

But no. The promotional images are just that, as striking yet cryptic as those that preceded past seasons, or the poster designed by Milton Glaser released last week. “If these images answer any questions, that’s an accident,” says series creator and executive producer Matthew Weiner.

Season seven of “Mad Men” premieres April 13th. As with “Breaking Bad,” AMC is splitting the final season into two seven-episode halves, with the last stretch airing in 2015. In an interview Wednesday, Weiner circled the themes of the coming season and discussed the inevitable scrutiny of the show’s finale.

After a seismic end to season six, here we see Don sharing space with Roger, his oldest ally, and the women he’s been closest too, Peggy and Megan. Should we read something into the juxtapositions in these images?

You can, I guess. We always take these [pictures] in a vacuum. One year Betty Draper had gained 35 pounds and we shot January [Jones] normally in the photos. I just want to remind people who are the characters are. But their couplings and so forth is something you have to take with a grain of salt, I’m afraid to say. We always think of an environment in which we can show all our people and bring all the craftspeople—makeup, hair, costumes, great photography from Frank Ockenfels —and add a touch of glamour. It’s apart from the show, but whets people’s appetite for where we’re going.

Does the emphasis on travel say anything about the state these characters are in as the season begins?

It’s funny to talk about air travel, because there were more hijackings and plane-related crimes at that period than at any other time until the catastrophes we’ve experienced in 2001, and so forth. We have a show that was bicoastal last year, and I like the idea of harkening back to an era where we got dressed up to travel by air.

All of these questions will be answered when you watch the show. All I want now is to remind people that it’s there, that it is still made with the care and the attention it has in the past, and that this is the end of it. I have approached the season with the writing staff as a 14-episode journey which is split up. That means having two premieres and two finales. But the story is running across it, and this is the place we’re going to leave these people for the life of the show. You want to have some excitement for people to come back to. For me, sometimes that means just broadcasting a big question mark.

On a practical or artistic level, how did splitting the final season change your process?

My intention was that I would just do a 14 episode season and wherever it broke, it broke. But we always split the season in half. Hour seven of last year’s season was the merger, and if it had ended there, with Peggy typing out “for immediate release,” you would definitely have had a cliffhanger. But thinking about that 10-month gap [in season seven], I realized that episode seven better feel like an advancement of the story. More importantly, episode eight better feel like a premiere in some way. It really was a lot more work than I thought it was going to be. I said to the writers, “Is there anything that you want to do on the show that we’ve never done?” A lot of amazing things came up, some of which we will probably never do, unfortunately. I’m writing episode nine right now. That means there are five episodes left, three stories per episode, for 15 stories. It doesn’t seem like a lot of real estate.

And suddenly every story has a string directly attached to the finale.

I can’t think about how to tell a story while also thinking, “If you don’t hit a grand slam we’re going to lose the World Series!” I have to go back to, “What would Don do,” instead of, “Do you know this is the last time Don’s going to do blanket-blank?” I can’t deal with that! I just have to do my job, bird by bird. At the same time, in the back of my mind, I know we’re deciding where we going to leave these characters forever. And that is a responsibility.

In the past you’ve said that you had an image in your mind for the ending of the show. Is that image still the same one you’re working toward?

It is. Between seasons four and five is when I thought of it. It’s been on my mind through these last 36 episodes. You have to take my word for that. I love that the audience wants to know that I have a plan, and I understand that as a viewer. But there’s no mystery that’s going to be solved. What I’m hoping for is that they’ll have a great memory of the show, and it will have some completeness to it. For me, it’s about where I leave them permanently. It’s not so much about summing up the experience.

It must be interesting for you to see the response to other shows as they come to a close, as with the loud reaction to “True Detective,” and of course the much-debated finale of “Breaking Bad.”

It is incredible to me. As artists we crave that kind of feedback, good and bad. It’s never been like this before in history, really. At the same time, you have to be very careful about what the immediate response is. Giving them what they want is not necessarily what got you to that point. As you can see from “The Sopranos” and the response to it immediately afterward and the response over time as people re-watch or discover, it becomes clear that the ending was perfect. Episodes are like that on a weekly basis even. On our show, everything is interlaced and things advance in a deliberately unpredictable manner. What is important and not important is not known sometimes until the very end.

The last time I read an analysis of an episode was one called “Signal 30,” from season five. I liked the episode, and that’s not something I run out and say about the show all the time. But then season six comes out and people start complaining about how it wasn’t as good as season five. Someone said to me, “Was ‘Signal 30’ the apex of the show?” Well, what happened in between? Time passed. I would say on behalf of all the creators of these shows, whatever the overnight response is to your ending, it may take the audience awhile to figure out what you’re doing. And they also might be in mourning. I can say that as a viewer, when you have a relationship with these shows, as intense as they are right now, the loss itself makes it seem like you’re getting dumped, no matter what.

You stripped Don down to his foundation at the end of the last season. Was that liberating, to finally find bottom for that character?

My compliments to the writing staff and everyone who works here for painting us into a corner and giving us a lot to work with. Six years into this narrative, to have that much stuff hanging in the air, is a lot. I’m proud of the fact that this show does commit to change. It was not hard to take Don there, because I felt it mirrored what was going on in our society last year, and also in 1968: the anxiety of the culture was just emotionally overwhelming. People might not have been in the mood to see their hero insecure, because they were insecure. But to have Jon Hamm deliver on what it looks like when a man has some moment of reconciliation? What is the bottom for Don Draper? We’ve seen it. I’m also proud of the fact that we earned that moment, whether it was six years of earning it or just 13 episodes of it. Him turning to Sally [in the final scene where he shows his kids the whorehouse where he grew up], to me was one of those moments which you really fight to tell slowly, so that when it comes, it’s earned. Because the sentiment is so overwhelming and you don’t’ want it to be false, or cloying, or to pass by people. That took a lot of effort to hold it back so it could happen in 30 seconds, instead of it having it happen 50 times in as many episodes.

The easy assumption is that now that Don has hit that turning point, he can rebuild or redeem himself.

Let’s say you do decide to change. Who says that anybody else wants that? There are consequences that are independent of you. And your material needs being met may make you question the rest of your life. Those two issues are really what the show is about in its final season, about how to deal with the consequences of your actions. Are they irrevocable? How many times can you say I’m sorry, and does that really change anything? Does it change you? Also, I want to deal with what I think is the ending of the show on some psychic level: What do we do when we have our needs met in the material world? Is there something else? We have always alternated from season to season, telling a story from inside Don’s head and telling a story from watching Don. This season has been a play in both of those things. That conflict is literally what we’ve been working with as writers.

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